SEATTLE — I’m here talking to the guy who raised Washington football from the dead, Steve Sarkisian, and saw The Seattle Times reporting that Denver will likely get another league partner in Seattle University.

The Englewood-based WAC (I still find it odd that it’s located in suburban Denver with no Colorado members) has its board of directions meetings Monday and Tuesday in Park City, Utah. The invite will likely come Tuesday.

Seattle’s membership would begin in the 2012-13 academic year and bring WAC membership to nine. If you’re not keeping score at home, here’s the thumbnail on WAC membership: It lost Boise State after last season and will lose Fresno State and Nevada after the 2011-12 season, all to the Mountain West.

The Mountain West's new logo -- which the conference has nicknamed "The Rock."

The Mountain West Conference unveiled a, um, different logo — and even gave that logo a nickname.

In a press release, the conference claims the logo signals in the ushering in of “a new era in the 13-year history of the Mountain West.” The MWC also saved fans the trouble of trying to come up with a nickname for the logo. The conference has dubbed it “The Rock.”

“This initiative is emblematic of the evolution of our league,” MWC commissioner Craig Thompson said in the release. “The overwhelming majority of the people we spoke to said the Mountain West is bold, feisty and highly competitive, and we strongly believe these qualities are reflected in our new brand identity and our new logo.”

The new logo will be worn by all of the conference’s teams and be displayed on playing surfaces across the league.

The MWC’s website said: “Since its inception in 1999, the Mountain West has been at the forefront of progress and innovation.”

You know, like Thomas Edison and IBM.

“Today, we’re taking it one step further.”

The new logo coincided with the unveiling of the league’s new tagline: “This is our time.” A new website is planned for a July release.

The Mountain West this summer will lose BYU (to independence in football, and to the West Coast Conference in all other sports) and Utah (to the Pac-12). TCU leaves for the Big East in 2012.

Taking those spots in the MWC are Boise State (2011), Nevada (2012), Fresno State (2012) and Hawaii (2012).

It’s not often in life any individual gets every single item gift-wrapped on a wish list. BYU got all that and more Wednesday with its move to football independence.

I don’t know if anyone saw an eight-year agreement with ESPN coming. Then there are six games for the battle of non-service academy, independent rivals with a Notre Dame series.
There’s was even a cozy non-football home in the West Coast Conference, described by BYU president Cecil Samuelson described as “… a group of fellow private, faith-based institutions with whom we also shared strong academics.”

Does that make MWC schools a bunch of heathen illiterates?

There’s more. Getting every other sporting event on BYU-TV? Check. Keeping the series with arch-rival Utah? Check. A vague arrangement for BCS qualification? (No. 14 in the final BCS rankings) Check.

C’mon. There has to be some fine print.

First no financial terms were disclosed. The ESPN games will be on Thursdays and Fridays in addition to Saturdays. One reason the MWC presidents left ESPN in the first place was to have all its kickoffs on Saturdays.

The package includes three games a seasons on ESPN, ABC, or ESPN 2 and one on ESPNU.

Also, BYU will have nine games with WAC schools over the next two seasons.

One more note of surprise: BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe said an independent course was something discussed in BYU circles for five years. That would put the origins smack at the time the MWC’s current TV package went on air.

Incidentally, stadium namesake LaVell Edwards was seated at the press conference with BYU, ESPN and WCC dignitaries. He didn’t speak during the formal press conference.

I just had to wonder while I looked at the Internet telecast: what was Edwards thinking about a Mountain West group of schools without BYU in the ranks?

I read with interest an article in the current issue of Sports Illustrated (Apolo Ohno is on the cover) that talked about the Seattle-Tacoma area having become a hotbed for boys/men’s basketball talent.

One explanation includes a commitment to organizations that support traveling AAU Teams (including George Karl’s Friends of Hoop foundation) and other opportunities to grow in the game. Also, former stars from that area have made it a point to give back to the communities’ youth. (Chauncey Billups does that in Denver, of course).

Those who follow basketball recruiting have seen this coming for a while. Four or five years ago I wrote a column for The Denver Post about Seattle-Tacoma producing an inordinate number of blue-chippers and how coaches outside the Pac-10 had taken notice — including North Carolina’s Roy Williams (Marvin Williams) and Louisville’s Rick Pitino (Terrence Williams).

It’s amazing, really. We’re talking the Great Northwest, not Chicago or L.A. As far as producing hoop stars, the Sea-Tac region has left Colorado’s Front Range, well, in the dust.

Sea-Tac and metro Denver aren’t all that different in population (Seattle-Tacoma is No. 13 in TV market ranking, Denver is No. 16) or, I’d guess, in their demographic makeup.

But metro Denver only seems to produce a national top-50 bluechipper like a Billups or Matt Bouldin (likely West Coast Conference player of the year as a senior at Gonzaga) every 5-10-15 years or so. Sea-Tac rolls them out every year like an assembly line.

About a million people moved into the Front Range in the 1990s, many from California. I keep thinking — and hoping — that some of those families will produce blue-chip basketball players. I thought that when I wrote the column years ago. I’m still waiting.

The future is not all that encouraging, either. At last peek, I couldn’t find any Colorado high school basketball players listed on early national top-100 lists for the 2010-2011 recruiting cycle. But it’s not unusual to find kids from Minnesota or Iowa on there.

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.